Shall we speak then, of my tragedy?
It's not a sore subject, to say the least. I have had some time now, to
reconcile the facts within myself, and to accept my husband's death in
due course. But to know me truly as an artist, is also to know this most
terrible thing that has ever happened to me. It was a turning point in
my life that has made me who I am today. And it is from this experience
that my sculptures are born.

Tis not pretty, and so I forewarn
you and ask that you not feel pity for me. What has happened, I have lived
beyond. Stories come in all sorts. Some are fairy tales, some are fiction,
some are tragedies. But at the root, they are all stories which move us
in one way or another.

My story moves me forward....

September 11, 1998.
Eight o'clock.
Morning.

The pain is terrific, but he has been living with this for three
months under a doctor's care. Heartburn, they claim. But this morning,
it's different. His left arm is numb. His jaw aches. I call the doctor.
"We cannot see him until 10:30," the receptionist says. "The heck with
you. I'm taking him to emergency...I can't stand to see him in such pain,"
I say. She asks me to hold, and disappears for what seems like hours,
"The doctor says it's okay to take him to the hospital," says she." "As
if I need your permission!" I cried, and SLAM! the phone goes down.

The receptionist didn't seem
worried. The doctor didn't seem worried. No one seems worried except me.
I wake the children and dress them. Put my husband's shoes on because
he cannot bend over without grimacing. Walk ever so slowly to the 4Runner.
"Please drive slower, it hurts," he asks, and so I do. Stopping at all
the red lights. Creeping into the parking lot. As we're passing the guard
shack he says, "I'm gonna be sick," and his eyes roll back in his head...his
arms fling out to the sides, knocking the backwards baseball hat emblazoned
with the words "Not Scared" right off my head...

Quickly! Quickly now! Brakes
wailing like banshees as I screech to a stop outside the emergency room
doors. Children screaming, " What's the matter with Daddy! He's turning
into a monster! DADDY! " Trying to wrestle him out of the truck, but he's
stuck there....drawing deep gasping breaths, eyes focused on some
unseen point on the roof. Running. Running. Children screaming louder.
But I've got to leave them alone with him. No time! BAM! through the Emergency
Room doors. "HELP!!! My husband is having a heart attack right outside
the door! I need a doctor!" Back outside.

No one comes out to help.
No one comes.
No one comes.

"God, please gave me the strength to lift him!" But he's stuck there,
stiff between the seat and the floorboards. CPR CPR CPR...wracking
my brain on procedure. Climbing inside onto his lap to get leverage. "Craig!
Hold on... CRAIG! HOLD ON! YOU STAY HERE WITH ME DAMMIT!" His eyes
roll completely up till all I see is white, and I feel the peace come
over his being. I know he's leaving, and there is not a damn thing I can
do. Children screaming. SCREAMING. And then suddenly, the whole world
around me stops. Time stops, for just an instant. I hold his face, feeling
the life go out of his body. It is too late now, for anything.

No good-byes. None are necessary.
He knows, and I know.
We always have.

NOW the rushing doctors and nurses try to undo the undoable. I sit
for 40 minutes in a room behind closed doors, as they attempt to put the
life back in his eyes. I have no answers to the questions on my children's
faces.... until they come and flank us like a platoon of giant white robots,
all shaking their heads side to side in unison.

My son's face. I saw the minute
he realized that all these white coats were saying his daddy was never
coming home ever again. He was looking at me as if to say, "Mommy, please
make it not true." I saw the way his cheeks scrinched up and his eyes
clamped shut -- right before the howl.

I felt it then. Something closed
in me. And the warrior came to the surface. It had to. I was alone
now. No husband. My entire family hundreds of miles away. My in-laws a
thousand miles away. Just me. Alone. My entire existence changed in one
swift moment. Turned on a dime. Suddenly, I got taller. And something
inside me said, this WILL NOT beat me. I am a WARRIOR! And as I pushed
through the white coats, and took hold of my children I vowed to myself
that we would survive, and be happy.

He is thirty-six. I am thirty-six.
My son is nine. My twin daughters are six.

I am widowed. They are fatherless.

There comes a time in everyone's life that somehow, in some way,
we live for one moment only. When time stops, and suddenly the old meaning
of life question is answered right there in our hearts. You all
know, when you're filled with big huge emotion from your chest to your
throat and suddenly all of the material things in life seem insignificant
in the face of it.

Well, for some of us, that moment
comes in the form of a loss. Especially a sudden death that brings home
in an instant everything that is really truly important to us. You see,
the meaning of life is simply this - LOVE.

My husband's name was H. Craig
Bryant. He and I had been soulmates, married for the better part of 13
years. I met him on Christmas day, at the home of a dear friend of mine
who would later become my brother-in-law, and it was the proverbial love
at first sight. He came to visit me on New Year's Eve - and never left.
Well, that is until death did us part...

I cannot decide whether or not
it was a blessing in disguise that the family was all together when it
happened. It was a blessing that we were with him as he died, and maybe
not a blessing that my children are still recovering from the experience
of it - as am I.

For months afterwards, I had
difficulty sleeping. There was suddenly so much empty time to fill and
so much grief to process, and as all of my family lives out of state,
I was going it alone. All in all, it made for some pretty endless nights.
Then my mother, who knows me best, came to the rescue with a simple gift.

My salvation came in the guise
of a box of clay. It was pretty innocuous, lying there on my coffee table
for weeks - a bunch of brightly colored rectangles that Mom claimed I
could knead my grief into as I watched inane TV till the wee hours of
the morning. She called to the artist in me, and hoped this small gift
would inspire me to create something beautiful from my pain. How many
artists throughout history have done just that?

Death touches all of us at some
point in our lives. And when it happens, we have two choices, really.
We can either drown ourselves in an ocean of grief or we can swim for
the shore. A very wise man I know says that the best thing you can do
about death is ride off from it. And he's right. So late one night, I
took clay in hand and began my journey back to joy.

I was worried, not so much about
the fact that I had never sculpted anything before, but more about what
I would turn out. I wondered if it would be some awful grieving howling
thing, considering the experiences of the time. You see, when I pick up
the clay, I don't really know what I am about to create. It's more like
watching what is born from the raw material as my fingers push and pull
it.

That night, under my hands,
a face began to take shape. And when I saw the abject joy in its features
I knew for the first time that I really - truly - was going to be alright.
I found hope in the fact that such a character was still inside of me.
That there might be more joy yet to be uncovered. I finished that piece
in one night, and baptized him "Acceptance", because it seemed my turning
point. And ever since, each piece I create erases a little bit of my grief,
and releases a little bit more of my joy.

I have accepted Craig's death,
and am slowly riding off from it, yet not from him. Sculpting frees my
mind to wander through my memories, and my love for him is alive in each
piece I create. Some of my sculptures contain real tears, kneaded into
the clay, although I'll never tell which ones.

When Craig died, I thought his
death premature. How could he leave so quickly when he was so darned young?
But the creation of "Acceptance" taught me this: Society constitutes death
as a failure, and we try to keep our people alive as long as we can, by
whatever means. But death is not a failure to those who die - only
to those of us left behind. To their soul, death is a relief - a release
- a time to let go of the body and free the soul for other pursuits.

All of our lives we believe
we are our bodies, looking out from behind our eyes. Sometimes we believe
we are our minds, but it is only at the time of death that we find out
who we truly are. We are not just bodies which contain our souls till
death. Instead, we are souls who inhabit these bodies for a time
until we are reborn in our next existence.

So we must understand when someone
chooses to let go of life, whether consciously, or subconsciously, and
at whatever age. We must accept their soul's decision, and that allows
us to move forward into our own lives with joy. It allows us to celebrate
our time with that loved one, and to believe that it is quite alright
to find happiness again without them.

As you meander through my site,
celebrate with me that it constitutes a journey of self healing. And should
one of my pieces move you in such a way that you decide to own it, then
you honor me, and I thank you. I am blessed that something born from this
love and these two hands should bring joy to you...

May you walk in peace and beauty.

~red

"Acceptance"
Let It Rain. And Should My Umbrella Break, I'll Build An Ark.